Tuesday, 21 August 2007

The City of Marseille

Ok, so apparantly Marseille is a bigger and more exciting and beautiful city than Aix [but I really think that's comparing apples and oranges], so we decided to take a day and walk around a bit to discover Marseille. It really is nice, beside the seaside, lots of beaches and monuments, the old port. We got camera crazy and had to continuously shout at the others to hurry up since they were taking pictures of every stone on the floor; i took a lot as well, so here are just some aggregated photos.

On the way to Marseille: a beautiful bridge [i don;t know the name of it], i tried to capture it while the bus was moving, i think i got it well enough. I capture some of the signs that document the city's name. Yes, there's a lot of graffity in france. Unlike New York City [which got rid of graffity problems years ago] and implemented laws to clean up after your dogs on the street, France can be quite a dirty place.

An Arch in the centre ville [city center] of Marseille, inscribed on the top is "a la republique marseille reconnaissante". The streets of Marseille are lined with buildings and buzzing with traffic and people.

This dark stairway with the port in the background was just before the place we stopped to eat lunch [which i will never have cold again - it was quite raw :S]. Eating lunch from left to right: Marie from India, Samsethy from Cambodia, Chris from India, Ming from Vietnam, and Dawith from Ethiopia.] As you cna see: the IMMIT [Masters] group [Cohort] is quite mixed and very international.

The Marseille streets are extremely small, wait, actually there are streets ALL over France [that i've seen so far, in Aix as well] that are so small, that you may even call it a "path" or a "trace". The amazing thing though is that these French people waive their way through them with ease. Most of the French cars, or the cars that are in France, are designed like the "Smart" car [below].

The Entire town is lined with this red line on the streets that passes thorough all the tourist sites and monuments. This is a stupid-proof implementation for those ditsy tourists who can't read a map; so they can simply follow the red line without getting lost.

The Navette buses: these were the buses we took to go to and from Marseille. Notice the angry French woman looking at me almost as if she wanted to rip the camera out of my hands; she's like "what are you looking at!!"